Released version 0.9 preview 3 - New game mode: "Battle"

In this update we added brand new game mode, called "Battle", where you can easily set up fleets for oppose factions and observe an epic space combat.

Technically, it was already possible before via sandbox mode, but it was extremely inconvenient and required quite long manual world reloading to clean up a world after each battle. But in this mode everything should be nice and easy to use.

You may ask why we decided to implement another game mode instead of focusing on "survival" game mode? There is several reasons:

1. Main feature of the game it is a ship building, but survival game mode restricts a creativity, so we want to create various mini game modes to use and test created ships in various situations.

1. Battle mode it is one of such environment where people can play with ships in combat situations without distraction on repairing after each battle and attempts to find a proper enemy fleet.

2. Survival mode it is a complex task. It is a well balanced collection of all game challenges in the single persistent world. So each "mini challenge \ game mode" it is actually a part of future survival game mode. In that way it is much easier to develop individual parts of the game instead of single big task. When every game feature will be properly designed and tested in sandbox mode it will be easier to implement in the survival game mode in proper way.

Overall, we are very happy with such new concept, because earlier it was almost impossible to participate in large scale fleets battle, but now it is very easy to launch and play with different ship designs. Also it is great for testing of various weapons, features and overall ship performance.

In the next update we plan to greatly expand such concept and implement more environments and challenges for created ships.

CHANGE LOG

Improvements

• New "Battle" game mode which is great to test various ship designs against each other or just observe large scale epic battle

• AddedGUIRedesign of main menu in order to provide better interface for new game mode and other upcoming features
• AddedGUISome new icons in various places of interface

• GUI: Now DPS value displayed for various weapons

• Changed default controls: Camera rotation = RMB, Camera pan = MMB or Space

• Cannons, lasers and rockets no longer cause damage to its own ship where it installed

• Improved smoke trail effect of rockets

• Added new model of rockets

Fixes

• Turret target prediction works again

• Nuclear reactors works again

• Fixed material of new engine

• "Hide interface" button now hides everything, including notifications

• Ship in edit mode no longer tries to keep designated altitude if this mode was enabled before

• RemovedGUIRemoved "J" and "W" symbols from various GUI in order to avoid confusion with real world values and keep interface simple to understand
• FixedGUIFixed non-rounded "max flow" value for some power storages

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